Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve

BY BECCY TANNER The Wichita Eagle Photos Travis Heying/Heying A grasshopper sits on a stalk of grass in the Konza Prairie near Manhattan. The prairie, established in 1986, will have an open house on September 25. PHOTO BY TRAVIS HEYING, The Wichita Eagle Gallery: Kansas Prairie A conservation initiative seeks to preserve up to 1 million acres of tallgrass prairie in the Flint Hills — some of the last stands of tallgrass in the nation. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is considering buying voluntary conservation easements in 14 Kansas counties. Participating landowners would have control over day-to-day operations on their land, and be ... Read Full Story

WICHITA, Kan. (AP) – The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is considering a program that it says could preserve up to 1 million acres of tallgrass prairie in the Flint Hills. The service is studying the possibility of buying voluntary conservation easements in 14 Kansas counties. The land could not be developed for residential or commercial use. But the Fish and Wildlife Service says participating landowners would have control over daily operations of their land, and would be able to pass it on or sell it. Amy Thornburg, with the Fish and Wildlife Service in Denver, says the plan is still ... Read Full Story

The Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve near Emporia, Kansas, contains most of the 4% of the remaining tallgrass prairie left in the United States. Tallgrass once covered 140 million acres in this country, but it's almost all gone now. Perception can be skewed when we don't have as many landmarks as we're used to. For example, in the photo above, the trees on the horizon are about 18 miles away. It's amazing to see wide open spaces with no phone poles or light wires. I visited on May 11, and the wild flowers were just starting to come up. Apparently May and June are the ... Read Full Story

October 31st, 2009 | Author: admin LAWRENCE, Kan. (AP) A team from the Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve is in South Dakota this week watching as a herd of wild bison is captured to bring back to the Kansas Flint Hills. Map of Preserve South Dakota officials are rounding up about 20 wild bison at the Wind Cave National park site in the Black Hills region of South Dakota. About 20 wild bison ranging in age from 1 to 2 1/2 years will be shipped to the Flint Hills. The plan is to eventually have a herd of about 100 bison roaming parts of the ... Read Full Story

Back in the early 1960’s, Unitarians in Rockford were scouting locations for a new church building. One of the search committee volunteers noticed some native bluestem grasses growing along the edges of the property. Forty years later, if someone walks up the hill behind the UU Church of Rockford, there is a wide gap in the trees. Half an acre of prairie grasses rustle in the almost continual breeze. Not that long ago – geologically speaking – Illinois was subsumed in an immense sea of grass that stretched to the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. In the 1830’s, a man named John Deere (yes, ... Read Full Story